Length Of Yellow Lights Could Prevent More Accidents

According to Hesham Rakha, The Director Of Sustainable Mobility at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, has conducted research that supports the idea of longer yellow lights at intersections prevents more accidents. Since 2005 he has been doing research on driver’s behavior on yellow lights. The researchers goal is to determine yellow light signal times for intersections that are safer and still efficient.

If a driver decides to slam on the breaks at an intersection during a yellow light, it could cause a rear end accident. If a driver decides to proceed, it could cause an accident with side street traffic. More than 20 percent of motor vehicle accident fatalities, occur at intersections.

“If the yellow time is not set correctly, a dilemma zone is eminent,” Rakha said.

“The dilemma zone occurs when the driver has no feasible choice,” he said. “In other words the driver can neither stop nor proceed through the intersection before the light turns red. This can also occur if the approaching vehicle is traveling faster than the posted speed limit and/or if the driver’s perception and reaction time is longer than the design one-second value.”

Overall Hesham Rakha research will most likely lead to a lot of states, cities and municipalities adopting the new yellow light traffic timing. To read more about his reasearch, please visit this link. This is going to overall lead to fewer accidents and less injuries and deaths. Not only is this great for the community, it will also be good for your pocket-book too.

If there are fewer accidents, injuries, property damage and deaths from motor vehicles accidents in your zip code, it will drive down the cost of insurance on all sides. Not only on Comp and Collision, but also on liability too. With less insurance losses in your area, the cheaper your insurance is going to be.

Sources: (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

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